The development of efficient diving fins is a difficult challenge. The difficulty of the challenge essentially arises due to the lack of controllability/repeatability of a human's kicking stroke while swimming. Even though a human may attempt to maintain a constant speed, leg angle, cadence, intensity, etc., the fact remains that the kicking stroke will vary dramatically from one stroke to another. This being the case, it becomes difficult to make any analytical measurements of the performance and efficiency of the diving fin.
Attempts to simulate a "flipping" motion of a fin have been made. These attempts, however, have resulted in at most a device which simply flips the fin up/down in a reservoir. While this method may yield information as to how water is displaced by the fin, the integrity of the information is suspect because of the crude method utilized to move the fin in the reservoir. Additionally, this method does not provide any feedback as to how a particular fin design may effect a user's physical condition, for example ankle fatigue of the user.
Thus, a need exists for a kick stroke simulator which provides an accurate representation of a kick stroke during swimming so that the performance of the diving fin can be enhanced and the overall design of the diving fin can be optimized for particular applications.